Curiosity, Monty Python and All Those Lovely Little Boxes

Curiosity killed the cat (they say). I don't always understand cats but truly believe that they are wiser than me, so maybe death is worth the gained perspective? It's very possible that cats are on to something important. 

Perhaps it's essential to be curious and that they don't know what they're talking about.

They must live in those "little boxes on the hillside" that Malvina Reynolds wrote about in 1961 and whose song I belted out at the top of my lungs in the back of my family's giant station wagon when I was five. It was a colossal tan Country Squire with fake wood paneling on the side and bench seats without seatbelts along the sides in the wayback. My brother and I rattled around on those seats with my dad's guitar and songbooks when, each summer, we crossed the continent in search of another great national park to explore. We always went to a new park because we were curious.

Why? Well, why not? We were curious.

Once, curiosity did leave us stranded when a tire on our StarCraft tent trailer shredded - tore through the wheel well and flung multicolored clothes packed in the compartment above all over the prairie like a magic carpet. I remember laughter and shoulder shrugging as we all stood in the hot afternoon wind on the side of that desolate North Dakota highway waving at all the grinning people in cars that sped by. It didn't kill us. The tow truck came, the tire was fixed, and we had a new story to tell around the campfire that night. It was wonderful.

I'm 55 years old now and I still like to be curious. Otherwise, I risk succumbing to Monty Python's overzealous clean-up crew before my time. I can just hear the clang of the bell and shouts of "bring out your dead" as I am clubbed on the head and thrown on top of the other poor muddy saps in the ox-cart of non-existence. 

"Sorry, just doin' our jobs ma'am," the driver of the ox-cart would say with a twisted grin. "Your just too damned boring to stay here."

Nope, not gonna let that happen. 

If I don't take a risk and try to go somewhere exciting because my underwear might end up strewn like prayer flags in the sagebrush for all to see, I will never find true magic. It's just that simple. 

Underwear is overrated anyway.

Doing something new and getting out of my rut is a surefire way to keep at least my mind somewhat young. I never know what will show up and spark my curiosity, like that day on the highway and the Little Boxes song. I haven't thought of that day in decades, and yet here it is, and I'm  singing along with Malvina just like I did when I was five. 


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